SDO Image is Runner-Up in Wikimedia Foundation Contest

On Aug. 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere erupted into space. The coronal mass ejection, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), traveled at more than 900 miles per second, causing auroras to appear on the night of Monday, Sept. 3.

Producer Scott Wiessinger of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., created a lightened, blended version of the CME using SDO’s 304 and 171 angstroms (wavelengths). This blended image earned second place in Wikimedia Commons’ “Picture of the Year 2012” contest.

Wikimedia Commons, an online repository of public domain imagery, is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation (as is Wikipedia). The annual photo contest has taken place since 2007. Entries are voted on by Wikimedia Commons users.

2012 finalists can be viewed at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012

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